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13 Umbrella Agency ON JANUARY 17, 1972, I JOINED THE STATE OF Washington’s new Department of Social and Health Services, taking on two titles:director,Division ofVocational Rehabilitation,and assistant secretary, Department of Social and Health Services. The first title represented my major function, directing the vocational rehabilitation program, but the title of DSHS Assistant Secretary requires a bit more explanation.In that capacity,I was part of a ninemember executive secretariat that had policy-making and administrative oversight of all the department’s programs. The state legislature created the department so that the state’s various health and social service programs could be gathered into one coherent and more cost-effective department. In addition to vocational rehabilitation ,DSHS programs included assistance payments (welfare) for families, the elderly, and the disabled; adult corrections; juvenile rehabilitation; public health; mental health; child welfare; social services; and veterans’ services. Most of the programs had been departments and were now expected to function as parts of a single department. DSHS was the largest state department, with a budget of $2 billion. The umbrella agency approach for the Department of Social and Health Services—its critics called it a superagency—was one of the first reorganization efforts of its kind in the nation. The new department was a controversial experiment with as many detractors as supporters. Detractors resented the loss of their programs’ independence and power.They also suspected that smaller programs such as vocational rehabilitation would be swallowed up in a massive welfare-program takeover and would gradually disappear. I knew enough about federal law to feel certain that a welfare program could not legally take over the vocational rehabilitation program . I was also convinced after several briefings with Mike Linn and Sid Smith that a takeover was not in the plans. The state legislature ’s only intent in creating the new department was to achieve improved coordination among its many health and social programs, not to create an indistinguishable melting pot of programs. Nevertheless , many DVR staff and their supporters across the state felt otherwise. Rumors persisted throughout the first few years of my tenure that there would be a sit-down or other form of staff demonstrationtotaketheDivisionofVocationalRehabilitationoutofDSHS . The clear challenge for me as DVR director was to keep the program operating successfully within the new department structure. After assessing the program’s strengths and weaknesses, I concluded that I could best exercise leadership over DVR by achieving two initial objectives: first, gain control over the staff and, second, improve the program’s image. DVR management was in the hands of an old boys’ club of white males, at or nearing retirement age, who carried out their jobs using the same old approaches and methods .To facilitate their departure, I announced that I expected them to provide their staffs with the knowledge and skills necessary to raise the number of successful rehabilitations among disabled people. I calculated that these managers would not be able to improve their effectiveness and thus would fail to develop their staffs accordingly. My second strategy was to establish affirmative action priorities requiring managers to hire ethnic minorities and the disabled, categories in which DVR had been chronically deficient. Again, I calculated that the old boy’s club of managers would have difficulty carrying out this directive. My next step in gaining control over staff was to hire a tough, no-nonsense deputy director. I hired Spence Hammond away from the governor’s Office of Finance. I knew him to be a good manager from our days with the federal regional office. His assignment was 194 the activist executive, 1970–1995 to carry out much of the detailed staff work, particularly in managing personnel and establishing quantifiable program objectives. Spence and I understood from the outset that the task I was assigning him would probably not endear him to the staff. It did not. My three-prong approach had its desired effect. Within a year, most of the original managers retired or resigned, thus enabling me to hire staff more compatible with my management style and program direction.There was another positive result,for me at least: employees now considered me more approachable than Spence, a case of “good cop, bad cop.” I was now free to work on my second objective, to improve the program’s image. DVR needed to market itself as a program that had positive outcomes for disabled people, not just a program that did good things...

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